The Bondman

Hall Caine

Description

The Bondman (1890) is a novel written by British author Hall Caine. Inspired by the epic scale of the ancient Icelandic sagas as well as the Biblical tale of Jacob and Esau, Caine sought to explore the narrative possibilities of brotherhood and fate while paying homage to the historical link between Iceland and the Isle of Man. Born to a Manx father, Caine also had a personal connection to the novel’s setting.

The story shifts between the perspectives of Jason and Michael, two half-brothers abandoned by their father, the Icelandic fisherman Stephen Orry. When Michael, who is raised by the Deputy Governor of the Isle of Man, comes of age, his estranged father sends him to Iceland in order to rectify Stephen’s mistreatment of his Icelandic wife and son. At the same time, Jason journeys to the Isle of Man in order to seek revenge on his father, only to be forced to rescue Stephen from a shipwreck off of Maughold Head, a dangerous point on the easternmost shore of the Isle of Man. While Jason weighs the cost of forgiveness and falls in love with Greeba, his half-brother Michael rises to power in a newly independent Iceland. As the story unfolds, and as fate draws the story’s heroes closer together, The Bondman explores some of humanity’s eternal themes: love, faith, kinship, and sacrifice. Caine’s novel is epic in terms of its setting and political context, but it explores matters of the heart as though they were our own.

Hall Caine’s The Bondman is a work about ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances, and remains, over a century after it was published, an essential piece of English literature. Although he was one of the most famous and acclaimed authors of his time, Caine’s work remains relatively unknown today. With this edition, it is hoped that Hall Caine once again receives not only the attention he deserves, but the respect and admiration his work demands.

With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Hall Caine’s The Bondman is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

Sujets

• Dinamarca
• Iceland
• Denmark
• Sagas
• Fiction
• Islande

Informations

• Publié par: Mint Editions
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781513272634
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

The Bondman
Hall Caine
 
 
The Bondman was first published in 1890.
This edition published by Mint Editions 2020.
ISBN 9781513267630 | E-ISBN 9781513272634
Published by Mint Editions®
minteditionbooks.com
Publishing Director: Jennifer Newens
Design & Production: Rachel Lopez Metzger
Typesetting: Westchester Publishing Services
 
C ONTENTS I. S TEPHEN O RRY, S EAMAN, OF S TAPPEN II. T HE M OTHER OF A M AN III. T HE L AD J ASON IV. A N A NGEL IN H OMESPUN V. L ITTLE S UNLOCKS VI. T HE L ITTLE W ORLD OF B OY AND G IRL VII. T HE V OW OF S TEPHEN O RRY VIII. T HE G OING OF S UNLOCKS IX. T HE C OMING OF J ASON X. T HE E ND OF O RRY T HE B OOK OF M ICHAEL S UNLOCKS XI. R ED J ASON XII. H OW G REEBA WAS L EFT WITH J ASON XIII. T HE W OOING OF J ASON XIV. T HE R ISE OF M ICHAEL S UNLOCKS XV. S TRONG K NOTS OF L OVE XVI. E SAU’S B ITTER C RY XVII. T HE Y OKE OF J ACOB XVIII. T HE S WORD OF E SAU XIX. T HE P EACE O ATH XX. T HE F AIRBROTHERS XXI. T HE P ARDON XXII. T HE P RESIDENT OR THE M AN XXIII. T HE F ALL OF M ICHAEL S UNLOCKS T HE B OOK OF R ED J ASON XXIV. W HAT B EFELL O LD A DAM XXV. T HE S ULPHUR M INES XXVI. T HE V ALLEY OF THE S HADOW OF D EATH XXVII. T HROUGH THE C HASM OF A LL M EN XXVIII. T HE M OUNT OF L AWS XXIX. T HE G OSPEL OF L OVE XXX. T HE G OSPEL OF R ENUNCIATION
 
I
S TEPHEN O RRY, S EAMAN, OF S TAPPEN
I n the latter years of last century, H. Jorgen Jorgensen was Governor-General of Iceland. He was a Dane, born in Copenhagen, apprenticed to the sea on board an English trader, afterwards employed as a petty officer in the British navy, and some time in the command of a Danish privateer in an Alliance of Denmark and France against England. A rover, a schemer, a shrewd man of affairs, who was honest by way of interest, just by policy, generous by strategy, and who never suffered his conscience, which was not a good one, to get the better of him.
In one of his adventures he had sailed a Welsh brig from Liverpool to Reykjavik. This had been his introduction to the Icelandic capital, then a little, hungry, creeping settlement, with its face towards America and its wooden feet in the sea. It had also been his introduction to the household of the Welsh merchant, who had a wharf by the old Canning basin at Liverpool, a counting-house behind his residence in Wolstenholme Square, and a daughter of five and twenty. Jorgen, by his own proposal, was to barter English produce for Icelandic tallow. On his first voyage he took out a hundred tons of salt, and brought back a heavy cargo of lava for ballast. On his second voyage he took out the Welshman’s daughter as his wife, and did not again trouble to send home an empty ship.
He had learned that mischief was once more brewing between England and Denmark, had violated his English letters of marque and run into Copenhagen, induced the authorities there, on the strength of his knowledge of English affairs, to appoint him to the Governor-Generalship of Iceland (then vacant) at a salary of four hundred pounds a year, and landed at Reykjavik with the Icelandic flag, of the white falcon on the blue ground—the banner of the Vikings—at the masthead of his father-in-law’s Welsh brig.
Jorgen Jorgensen was then in his early manhood, and the strong heart of the good man did not decline with years, but rode it out with him through life and death. He had always intended to have a son and build up a family. It was the sole failure of his career that he had only a daughter. That had been a disaster for which he was not accountable, but he prepared himself to make a good end of a bad beginning. With God’s assistance and his own extreme labor he meant to marry his daughter to Count Trollop, the Danish minister for Iceland, a functionary with five hundred a year, a house at Reykjavik, and another at the Danish capital.
This person was five-and-forty, tall, wrinkled, powdered, oiled, and devoted to gallantry. Jorgen’s daughter, resembling her Welsh mother, was patient in suffering, passionate in love, and fierce in hatred. Her name was Rachel. At the advent of Count Trollop she was twenty, and her mother had then been some years dead.
The Count perceived Jorgen’s drift, smiled at it, silently acquiesced in it, took even a languid interest in it, arising partly out of the Governor’s position and the wealth the honest man was supposed to have amassed in the rigorous exercise of a place of power, and partly out of the daughter’s own comeliness, which was not to be despised. At first the girl, on her part, neither assisted her father’s designs nor resisted them, but showed complete indifference to the weighty questions of whom she should marry, when she should marry, and how she should marry; and this mood of mind contented her down to the last week in June that followed the anniversary of her twenty-first birthday.
That was the month of Althing, the national holiday of fourteen days, when the people’s law-givers—the Governor, the Bishop, the Speaker, and the Sheriffs—met the people’s delegates and some portion of the people themselves at the ancient Mount of Laws in the valley of Thingvellir, for the reading of the old statutes and the promulgation of the new ones, for the trial of felons and the settlement of claims, for the making of love and the making of quarrels, for wrestling and horse-fighting, for the practice of arms and the breaking of heads. Count Trollop was in Iceland at this celebration of the ancient festival, and he was induced by Jorgen to give it the light of his countenance. The Governor’s company set out on half-a-hundred of the native ponies, and his daughter rode between himself and the Count. During that ride of six or seven long Danish miles Jorgen settled the terms of the intended transfer to his own complete contentment. The Count acquiesced and the daughter did not rebel.
The lonely valley was reached, the tents were pitched, the Bishop hallowed the assembly with solemn ceremonies, and the business of Althing began. Three days the work went on, and Rachel wearied of it; but on the fourth the wrestling was started, and her father sent for her to sit with him on the Mount and to present at the end of the contest the silver-buckled belt to the champion of all Iceland. She obeyed the summons with indifference, and took a seat beside the Judge, with the Count standing at her side. In the space below there was a crowd of men and boys, women and children, gathered about the ring. One wrestler was throwing everyone that came before him. His name was Patricksen, and he was supposed to be descended from the Irish, who settled, ages ago, on the Westmann Islands. His success became monotonous; at every fresh bout his self-confidence grew more insufferable, and the girl’s eyes wandered from the spectacle to the spectators. From that instant her indifference fell away.
By the outskirts of the crowd, on one of the lower mounds of the Mount of Laws, a man sat with his head in his hand, with elbow on his knee. His head was bare, and from his hairy breast his woolen shirt was thrown back by reason of the heat. He was a magnificent creature—young, stalwart, fair-haired, broad-chested, with limbs like the beech tree, and muscles like its great gnarled round heads. His coat, a sort of sailor’s jacket, was coarse and torn; his stockings, reaching to his knees, were cut and brown. He did not seem to heed the wrestling, and there rested upon him the idle air of the lusty Icelander—the languor of the big, tired animal. Only, when at the close of a bout a cheer rose and a way was made through the crowd for the exit of the vanquished man, did he lift up his great slow eyes—gray as those of a seal, and as calm and lustreless.
The wrestling came to an end. Patricksen justified his Irish blood, was proclaimed the winner, and stepped up to the foot of the Mount that the daughter of the Governor might buckle about him his champion’s belt. The girl went through her function listlessly, her eyes wandering to where the fair-haired giant sat apart. Then the Westmann islander called for drink that he might treat the losing men, and having drunk himself, he began to swagger afresh, saying that they might find him the strongest and lustiest man that day at Thingvellir, and he would bargain to throw him over his back. As he spoke he strutted by the bottom of the Mount, and the man who sat there lifted his head and looked at him. Something in the glance arrested Patricksen and he stopped.
“This seems to be a lump of a lad,” he said. “Let us see what we can do with him.”
And at that he threw his long arms about the stalwart fellow, squared his broad hips before him, thrust down his head into his breast until his red neck was as thick as a bullock’s, and threw all the strength of his body into his arms that he might lift the man out of his seat. But he moved him not an inch. With feet that held the earth like the hoofs of an ox, the young man sat unmoved.
Then those who had followed at the islander’s heels for the liquor he was spending first stared in wonderment at his failure, and next laughed in derision of his bragging, and shouted to know why, before it was too late, the young man had not taken a bout at the wrestling, for that he who could hold his seat so must be the strongest-limbed man between the fells and the sea. Hearing this Patricksen tossed his head in anger, and said it was not yet too late, that if he took home the champion’s belt it should be no rude bargain to master or man from sea to sea, and buckled though it was, it should be his who could take it from its place.
At that word the young fellow rose, and then it was seen that his right arm was useless, being broken between the elbow and the wrist, and bound with a kerchief above the wound. Nothing loth for this infirmity, he threw his other arm about the waist of the islander, and the two men closed for a fall. Patricksen had the first grip, and he swung to it, thinking straightway to lay his